The life of a professor sounds like the best dream, and for a lucky few, it is. Once you get that tenured position of happiness, there really isn’t much to complain about. But that’s not the life of a significant percentage of those teaching college classes.
Yea, but at least where I am it is not as wide-spread and abused as in the US. From what I’ve heard from people there, it is almost rare to have a non-adjunct/TA the first year when studying. I have been to a few universities in Europe and I have met a total of 1 adjunct ever, and that was a rich software developer who exited tech because she thought it was fun teaching after her career in industry. Now it might be a bit field dependent though, I am in STEM + medicine so maybe it is more widespread in the humanities?
And as for the sports stuff I think I’ve seen some numbers which suggests football is a net-positive for US universities money wise.
Between undergrade and postgraduate, I have had at least 5 or more adjunct professors because I am in Journalism and because I took a few film studies classes while in undergraduate. All of them were connected to the field they were teaching and all but one of them who taught well except this one who barely taught us anything and just wanted us to read from textbooks. Two of the professors, I had were adjuncts because they taught full time at another college.
Idk I’ve worked at universities/research institutes in France, the UK, and Germany, and it’s pretty common in all of those, in the natural sciences. Probably not as bad as in the USA but still similar and heading down the same path over time.
Ah, I must’ve just missed them then. A bit sad to hear.